Sibling verification
Review sibling claims raised on student records and approve or reject them, so sibling concessions apply to the right families.
When someone links two students as brother and sister, FEMS records the claim but does not act on it yet. Sibling Verification is the queue where a person checks the claim and decides. This matters for money: an approved sibling link is what a sibling concession attaches to.
Prerequisites
You need Sibling Verification access. This is usually a front-office or student-affairs job rather than a teaching one.
Why the queue exists
FEMS deliberately accepts a sibling claim without proving the two students share a guardian. Anyone adding a student can name a sibling, and the claim is stored unapproved.
That means the queue is the only check. An unverified claim sitting in the list is not yet a sibling link, and no concession follows from it.
Working the queue
Go to Student > Sibling Verification. The page opens on Verification Request List.
The shared demo contained only approved rows. A pending claim is still needed to verify the decision controls safely.
Each row shows:
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Date | When the claim was raised. |
| Name & ID | The student the claim was raised on. |
| Type | The kind of relationship claimed. |
| Sibling | The other student in the pair. |
| Operation Type | Whether this claim adds a link or removes one. |
| Status | Where the claim has got to. |
| Request By | Who raised it. |
| Approved By | Who completed the decision, when available. |
Use Filter to narrow the list.
When Verify is available, click it to open the claim in full. The shared demo had no pending claim, so the decision controls remain unverified.
Deciding a claim
Before you approve, check the thing the system did not: do these two students actually share a guardian? Verify the relationship using your institution's approved evidence or escalation process. Use matching guardian names and mobile numbers only as supporting evidence.
Approve only when the family is genuinely one family. Approving a wrong pair can hand a fee concession to a student who is not entitled to it, and undoing it afterward means correcting the concession as well as the link.
What approval changes
Once a claim is approved:
- The two students are linked as siblings, and each shows on the other's Basic Info tab.
- If your school runs a sibling concession, FEMS recalculates it for that family. Concessions are ranked, so adding a sibling can change which student carries the discount.
Removing a sibling link recalculates the same way, and can drop a concession the family currently gets. Tell the accounts team when you remove a link on a family that receives one.
When something goes wrong
"Student and Sibling can't be same." Someone picked the same student on both sides of the pair. Re-open the claim and choose the actual sibling.
The same pair was claimed twice and no error appeared. Expected. Raising a claim that already exists succeeds quietly and does not create a second one, so you get the normal confirmation either way. Check this queue before assuming a claim was lost.
A claim was accepted for two students with no guardian in common. Also expected, and the reason this queue exists. FEMS does not test for a shared guardian when the claim is raised. You are the check.
A message about the sibling concession account not being configured. The accounting side of sibling concessions has not been set up for this academic year. Approving the link needs an accountant to configure the sibling concession account first. Send it to whoever owns your chart of accounts.
An approved sibling link didn't change the fee. Sibling concessions only run if your institution has them switched on. If they are on and the fee still hasn't changed, check the concession on the student's Accounts tab before assuming the link failed.
FAQ
Who is allowed to raise a sibling claim? Anyone adding or editing a student record can name a sibling from step 4 of the admission form or the student's record. The claim then waits here.
Does approving a sibling link give a discount automatically? Only if your school runs a sibling concession and it is configured. The link is the trigger, not the policy.
Two siblings are on different campuses. Can I still link them? The queue shows the campus for each side of the pair, so cross-campus pairs are visible here. Confirm the shared guardian as usual before approving.
I approved the wrong pair. Can I undo it? Raise a removal for that link, which comes back through this same queue as a remove operation. Check the family's concession afterwards.